Communications

CBP agents helped save two people trying to traverse the south Texas scrubland after the couple sounded a rescue beacon near an internal border checkpoint.

U.S. Border Patrol said agents assigned to the Kingsville Station, near Sarita, TX saved the lives of two illegal aliens who activated a rescue beacon after becoming lost in the brush on Feb. 4.

A multi-agency enforcement operation organized under a U.S. interagency effort to combat trans-border threats netted nine suspects, an AK-47 assault rifle and 498 pounds of marijuana on Feb. 1 near Interstate 8 in Stanfield, AZ.

The next generation public safety communications network should be managed by a non-governmental, non-profit organization that could impartially reconcile the myriad standards and procedures affecting emergency responders nationwide, said a report by an independent government advisory committee.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Savannah, GA, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Jan. 30 with the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) agreeing to share radio communications.

The agreement, said CBP, is part of a continued partnership between CBP and civilian law enforcement agencies that share radio communications to enhance security between the groups.  Through a DHS grant, said CBP, GPA bought a system that will allow both CBP and GPA to communicate directly through a radio frequency at GPA-regulated terminals.

The agency responsible for developing new technology for the Department of Defense is looking to the public for new ideas on how to power computers that control reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence operations.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) said computer power limitations, said are beginning to cramp computational capabilities that enable military systems. It said computational capabilities are increasingly limited by power requirements and constraints on heat dissipation.

Catalyst Communications Technologies, Inc., a provider of radio control over IP solutions to the push-to-talk marketplace, announced on Jan. 23 enhanced interoperability with broadband push-to-talk (PTT).

A federal grand jury in Laredo, TX, convicted a Zetas-linked “hitman” on a raft of conspiracy, racketeering and weapons charges on Jan. 25, after hearing testimony that outlined activities of the gang’s vicious assassination cells on both sides of the southern border.

LRAD Corp. has announced that its new LRAD 2000X acoustic hailing system broadcasts highly intelligible voice communication that can be clearly heard and understood over five miles away.

U.S. terror task force agents arrested a Denver-area man as he tried to travel overseas to join a terror group in Uzbekistan on Jan. 23.

Members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces arrested Jamshid Muhtorov, 35, of Aurora, CO, on Jan. 21 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on charges of providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Department of Justice said on Jan. 23. The arrest took place without incident, it said, and Muhtorov made his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Chicago on Jan. 23.